Starship Asterisk*

Saturn's Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters

Explanation: What lies at the bottom of Hyperion's strange craters? To help find out, the robot Cassini spacecraft that once orbited Saturn swooped past the sponge-textured moon and took images of unprecedented detail. A six-image mosaic from the 2005 pass, featured here in scientifically assigned colors, shows a remarkable world strewn with strange craters and an odd, sponge-like surface. At the bottom of most craters lies some type of unknown dark reddish material. This material appears similar to that covering part of another of Saturn's moons, Iapetus, and might sink into the ice moon as it better absorbs warming sunlight. Hyperion is about 250 kilometers across, rotates chaotically, and has a density so low that it likely houses a vast system of caverns inside.

<< Previous APOD

This Day in APOD

Next APOD >>

Can't get over the fact that Hyperion looks like a sponge. Who could have lost such a thing in space? Who but Orion, the mighty hunter?

Ann

Ann wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 6:18 am Can't get over the fact that Hyperion looks like a sponge. Who could have lost such a thing in space? Who but Orion, the mighty hunter?

Ann

To me it looks very much like a delicious morel mushroom.
_

APOD Robot wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 5:06 am Saturn's Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters

...At the bottom of most craters lies some type of unknown dark reddish material...

...I think this is more like the same material that covers the rest of the surface, except that it's wetted in the crater bottom by an unknown liquid...


https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/527 ... bba0_o.jpg

AVAO wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 4:18 pm

APOD Robot wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 5:06 am Saturn's Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters

...At the bottom of most craters lies some type of unknown dark reddish material...

...I think this is more like the same material that covers the rest of the surface, except that it's wetted in the crater bottom by an unknown liquid...


https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/527 ... bba0_o.jpg

So did you turn your Hyperion picture on the side to resemble a desiccated, moldering and fossilized human brain on purpose?

Ann

If there are underground caverns, perhaps controlled conditions are possible for habitation and bases.

Unknown atomic and molecular compounds encountered when visiting foreign domains pose threats to human safety. Suitports may be the answer to keep your nose from knowing how bad it smells even at Earth’s Hyperion.

I’d much rather smell a tree in hindsight.

AVAO wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 4:18 pm ...I think this is more like the same material that covers the rest of the surface, except that it's wetted in the crater bottom by an unknown liquid...

To be more precise. These currently no longer have to be liquid. I just mean that substances such as methane or ethane in liquid form could have been involved in their formation. The discolouration could then also be the result of chemical reactions.
Many craters with dark areas also have dark spots, which could be outflow openings.



Due to the rupture cliffs, I could also imagine that the whole area in the middle of the APOD picture was not created by a huge impact, but by the whole area slipping into an almost empty core. (If this effectively consists or consisted in large parts of water ice, this could have evaporated during an earlier approach to other moons, for example...)

Hmm, so the statement "This material appears similar to that covering part of another of Saturn's moons, Iapetus, and might sink into the ice moon as it better absorbs warming sunlight." seems to be implying that the holes in this Saturnian sponge might have formed over time as dark material splotches were - perhaps gently - deposited on the surface, only to cause local heating by absorbing sunlight, thereby melting the underlying material and creating the holes. Pretty neat, if true.

Seems that Hyperion may be a very large, dead comet, with nothing left to expel! No guess at what the skeleton consists of!

ErasmusRoterodamus wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 11:50 pm Seems that Hyperion may be a very large, dead comet, with nothing left to expel! No guess at what the skeleton consists of!

My oldest post; a dead comet; but who knows for certain!